Passage
Passage is a psychological-horror film released in 1997 and directed by Owen Emerson. It was produced by Gecko Entertainment LLC, Icon Productions, Capitol Films and The Kushner-Locke Company and distributed by Dimension Films. Plot The film centers on a group of friends who have to deal with a ruthless bully, Shawn. One of the friends, named Sean, seeks to pull a prank on him by taking him on a trip to the riverside, and convincing him that he's being chased by something and making him look insane to the public. The prank goes wrong with Sean accidentally killing Shawn by knocking him out and letting him fall into a quarry after he teases him over his dead father. His friends turn on him since previously, they learned his attitude came from an inferiority complex and mental disability. Sean maintains that he deserved to die. In the oncoming weeks, Sean goes through mysterious changes, such as accidentally spelling his name the way Shawn did, becoming out of shape and violently attacking people. Since Shawn died whilst drowning, Sean believes that he's alive and is pranking him. It causes the other students to avoid him since he refuses to accept skepticism. The next day, Sean finds his dog Cheech has been murdered. Recalling how Shawn was bothered by the dog, he claims that Shawn is in town but nobody believes him. His friends try to reason with him, but it leads to a fight. He hermits himself in his house and has visions of Shawn tormenting him. He ignores calls from his friends and loses contact with the rest of the neighborhood overtime. Later, Sean is contacted by the sherrif and a detective to try and find info on the murder and Sean also gets a book dealing with psychological stress in the mail. After having another vision of Shawn, he blacks out and reawakens hours later, with thirty minutes until his meeting. Upon getting there nobody shows up. He returns to his car and is horrified to find their bodies in his trunk. He goes to his book and sees that the pages were torn out. Sean blames Shawn for this but after realizing that the book was in a sealed FedEx package, there would be no chance of Shawn tampering with it, and that the blackout could've removed certain memories. Sean was responsible, and he gives in to his darker temptations. A few days later, Sean's girlfriend May comes over to check on him, and his house is in disrepair. Sean reveals himself, overweight and now closely resembling Shawn, even fully imitating him. Sean kills May as well as her new boyfriend who was waiting outside. Other bystanders succumb to the same grim fate, but Sean gets chased into the woods by the police, where he soon comes across Shawn's dead body. He suffers a heart attack from the immediate shock and dies, returning to his former being. A year later, a new sheriff visits Shawn's mother, who has accepted the fate of her dead son since the reveal granter her closure, but is accused of psychologically abusing her son and is told to not go into town anymore. The mother maintains that the sheriff has no evidence that could be used against her and he begrudgingly leaves. The camera pans out the window to the quarry where Shawn's body was, and where the bodies of the others currently rot. It quickly cuts to the mother biting into a weird piece of meat before going to the credits. Cast * Jason James Richter: Sean * Michael Ray Bower: Shawn * John Turturro: Sheriff Downey * Lily Tomlin: Shawn's mother * Valente Rodriguez: Chico * Nick LaTour: Detective Production Production began in 1995. Emerson envisioned the film as a serious production and went to Miramax to have it produced. He wanted a ten-million dollar budget to produce an entirely original setting, as well as a cast of real life people. When it became apparent that Emerson's idea would prove to be a money sink, the Weinstein brothers brought on producers Donald Kushner and (in his first producing credit) Elliot Strange to talk him into producing a more reasonable film. Emerson was talked into shooting the film on location in Fairmount, Minnesota with a much more reasonable $5,000,000 budget, and the film received a sales deal from Capitol Films in the UK. After Emerson finished the first cut of his film, the producers were unsatisfied with the final product, feeling that a film of a mundane genre doesn't mend well with an extensive time limit, so Emerson was forced to cut the film down. Soon after, the producers derided the final product as overly-simplistic and wanted to try something different with it. Strange merged the setting and an idea he had for an unwritten book to create a psychological thriller, something the producers considered to be a more viable option. Emerson handled the choice poorly and attempted to sabotage the film by trying to get actors he didn't want to leave the project (done by him not feeding them and locking them in their trailers.) and attempting to claim final say on what the producers wanted to do. There's also a rumor that Emerson physically assaulted Harvey Weinstein, leading to him nearly abandoning the project. Mel Gibson was originally going to play the part of the sheriff and also served as a producer on the film through his Icon Productions label, but Emerson refused to have him aboard. Icon's other manager Bruce Davey took Gibson's place and Gibson's role was given to John Turturro. Davey had to travel to the US to do the filming as Emerson demanded that all involved in the production be available. As a result of Emerson's near-tyrnicall approach at managing the film, leading to the film being put in development hell, Strange decided to shoot the film in another location in secret. Since their funding came from numerous equity firms, the lack of a film would've resulted in a bank fraud charge and all that were involved may be blacklisted by Hollywood, so they had to come up with something that would break even at the box office. To do this, Strange told Emerson that the film was cancelled to prevent him from questioning the producers on what they intended to do. Strange, Kushner, Davey and the Weinstein brothers traveled to Slinger, Wisconsin to shoot the film. Certain scenes had to be reshot since so many of them were filmed in Fairmount and most of the cast wanted to leave the project, having been worn out thanks to Emerson. Strange left the project in 1997 after fulfilling his obligations as a producer and returned to the television industry, and in the same year, the production on the film was finally brought to a close. The film was released less than a month after it finished, and Emerson didn't realize it until he saw a trailer for it while at a bar. He futilely tried to sue the producers for releasing his project without his knowledge, but was brought down by his treatment of them and the actors in the film. Both parties were granted an undisclosed settlement. Emerson filed for an Alan Smithee credit and to have his writing credit removed, which was granted. Strange and Emerson are still divided over what happened in the film, but have reached a mutual understanding since then. According to Strange, everything up until the aftermath of Shawn's death was part of Emerson's intended film. Reception The film received mixed reviews from critics, earning a 49% Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus being "An interesting premise, marred by lackluster execution, leaving no reason for another look." In spite of its poor reviews, thanks to the film's low budget, it was able to recoup its losses during its theatrical run, thanks to news of the film's production becoming known to the public and it did reasonably well on the home video market. Director's Cut Emerson released his intended film in 2005 on DVD. This version received generally negative reviews, citing a lack of innovation and engaging direction. It earned a 20% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 29% lower than the previously released version.